During last Friday’s Trion live stream, Gingers detailed some of the new UI adjustments and additions that will be added to RIFT in 2.7 and beyond. Sure, user interface stuff is kind of minor in the grand scheme of things, but in actuality, it can be really important to our ease of access and overall enjoyment of the game. That’s the whole reason most of us love addons, right? MMORPGs are all about customization, even down to the nuts and bolts of the buttons and frames we work with every time we’re online.

Keep reading to take a look at a list of some of the UI changes, additions, and future plans Gingers talked about (for more info you can also check out this forum thread that Gingers has been replying to with regular updates):

Fae Yule will be starting up later this afternoon in RIFT, but we can begin celebrating a little early with all of the new holiday goodies that arrived yesterday after the patch. There are lots of items both new and returning on the RIFT Store and that will be available off the Fae Yule NPCs once they’re live. There are a couple lockboxes, of course, and a menagerie of some friggen’ adorable pets. Oh, and good news for the achievement hounds out there– this year’s Fae Yule has a handful of new achievements to work on finally!

Care for a preview of all the new items? Head on over to Junkies Nation and take a look at our detailed writeup that comes complete with plenty of screenshots. Also, if you’re new to RIFT and this year’s Fae Yule will be your first, make sure to check out our guide from last year to get an idea of what you have to look forward to.

Sometimes it’s the little things that add a whole lot to our RIFT experience. Little things like artifacts, finding a new wardrobe, and getting a shiny pet are some of the little things that can turn an ordinary gaming session into something extra special. Speaking of the wardrobe system, we found out about a cool little thing headed our way that should make all of us wardrobe-chasers happier– we’re finally going to be able to preview dyes!

Gingers, one of RIFT‘s Senior UI Artists, announced the news on the forums yesterday. The previewing feature will only work inside the RIFT Store and will work with the character preview that displays on the right side of the UI frame, which means that we’ll need to equip any non-store wardrobe we want to preview. Here are some additional details:

Here is an example of how it will work: I’m looking at the dye section of the store, I click on Red Dye, the primary of my entire outfit in the store will now look red. Next I click Grey Dye, the secondary of my entire outfit will look Grey. The next color I preview will replace the primary color.

Now that I have my red and grey dyes picked out, I can keep those previewed and look at more costumes. Every costume I click on to preview will also be red and grey.

Trion, as always, is vigilantly keeping watch on the RIFT forums and making a note of player feedback regarding the issues many had with Mech Week and the ever-increasing stash of cash shop lockboxes we’ve been seeing lately. If you haven’t been keeping up on the forums, my recent editorial sums up both issues fairly decently. Essentially, a large portion of the RIFT playerbase feels Mech Week wasn’t properly communicated and executed due to the one-time daily, its status as a “world event”, and the lack of options for completing the achievement to obtain all of the pets.

Daglar posted his thoughts in one of the threads with constructive feedback from the community, and while he admitted that lockboxes probably won’t be disappearing anytime soon due to how popular they are among RIFT players, he did reiterate that our feedback is very important to the development team. From the sounds of it, the World Event UI frame popping up for promotions like Mech Week will be sticking around as well. Daglar did mention in a later post that the team was going to reevaluate Patron rewards and hopefully come up with something cool. A credit stipend still isn’t an option at this time.

The good news is that the items inside the Temporal Vaults for Mech Week will be made bind-on-account in this week’s upcoming hotfix. This is a good move, and one that helps alleviate some of the main issues players have experienced. Daglar also admitted the following: “We also know that we didn’t do a good enough job explaining that you only receive a single temporal vault per character. We’ll be taking that into account as we go forward.”

So, Mech Week. From the odd way that Trion handed out a single Temporal Vault that was followed up by vault-opening gadgets after the single vault was opened to the new achievement, the soulbound items, and the fun little UI ad depicting a RIFT Store promotion as a “world” event, Mech Week has garnered a lot of attention and frustration from the RIFT community. First it was the limited time sales, then Fashion Week, then the introduction of lockbox after lockbox after lockbox– and now we have Mech Week and its issues. Is Trion beginning to near that line where F2P shops often cause their playerbase to seek pastures that are greener and not so covered in shop ads?

I seek a possible answer to that question and offer Trion some constructive criticism in this week’s The Cash Shop Critic column over at Junkies Nation. You can check it out here.

Trion seems to be trying something a little new with their promoted RIFT Store goodies. They’re turning them into themes. Last week was fashion week and it came complete with costumes in the RIFT Store and a week of running around Tempest Bay then hitting /dance in particular spots for a few extra marks. This week it’s the mech rotation, and that means it’s Mech Week. There are some nifty mech mounts (and new pets/items) to pick up, but there’s a catch, of course– the new items are only found within the Mechanized Temporal Vault lockbox that’s available in the RIFT Store.

There is some good news, however. By running around Tempest Bay daily (notice a theme here?) and clicking/killing piles of mech parts, you get a Mechanized Temporal Vault. There’s also a slight catch with the Mechanized Temporal Vaults in that they come with a 24-hour timer when purchased/obtained. This means you’ll need to wait 24 hours to open them. To lower that timer, you’ll have to use little gadgets that are also purchasable in the RIFT Store or can randomly appear in the daily Patron login bags.

And… that’s about it for Mech Week. See the official blog post for more info. Oh, and now taking bets on what next week’s theme will be. Pony week? Corgi week? Dinosaur week? Dinosaur corgi week? Make it happen, Trion!

Remember the Glowing Ruby Ki Rin? How about the Shadow Hellbug or the Glowing Emerald Ki Rin? If you happened to be online when these limited time only items were available in the RIFT Store, you may have picked them up or knew someone who did. If you happened to not be online for those PST-based four hours, you were out of luck (unless you bought them from someone). Trion kind of went bananas for a couple weeks with the limited time only sales. Those sales seem to have quieted down for the moment, but despite Trion’s best intentions of allowing players to access unique, special goodies, there was one little thing the team forgot about– time zones.

While the RIFT Store is still one of the better F2P in-game cash shops around, there are some definite issues with RIFT’s cash store and with limited time sales such as these. Interested in digging a little deeper and reading some thoughts on these limited time sales and other issues regarding the the RIFT Store? Head on over to Junkies Nation and take a peek at our newest opinion column: The Cash Shop Critic. This entry’s all about the limited time RIFT sales.

At roughly 5:15 PM PST tonight (10/28), Trion added the Glowing Ruby Ki Rin to the RIFT in-game store. It costs 2700 Credits with the Patron discount and will only be available for the next four hours (until roughly 9:15 PM PST). Trion talked about these special limited time RIFT Store sales during last Friday’s live stream and Daglar explained that the team is still in the process of trying to figure out what types of special store items players enjoy and how they prefer to obtain them. Special mounts are definitely pretty cool, and the Glowing Ruby Ki Rin is quite pretty. Keep reading for a larger screenshot of this mount.

During yesterday’s Public Test Shard update, we saw some interesting items arrive in the RIFT Store’s wardrobe section as well as a preview of the new Mayhem in Mathoisa achievements that will be brought to live shards beginning October 4th when the event goes live. The new RIFT Store items were mentioned during a Trion live stream a few weeks back where the team showed off a few of the goodies headed our way for Autumn Harvest this year. The new Autumn Harvest items aren’t on the PTS yet, but if you ever wanted to dress up your character as a ninja or assassin type of hero, you might be in luck.

Trion’s up to their Vine tricks again. This time, the RIFT community team showed off a teaser of one of the new dance moves coming to RIFT in the future via Twitter. Yep, we’re going to be getting new mad skillz (or, not-so-skillful skillz) on the dance floor. Here’s the Tweet. You can also check out the full-size Vine.

Daglar also conveniently gave away a wee little hint regarding one type of dance move we’ll be getting. It seems one of moves may be something similar to a victory dance. In his post, he also confirmed the fact that these new dances will be exclusive to the RIFT Store. Given the fact that the community team also mentioned the word “soon” in the original Tweet, we’d say it’s also likely that these dances will be coming in 2.5 (we could be wrong, of course).

It’s good to see new RIFT fluff. Fluff isn’t necessary, sure, but it makes gaming a heck of a lot more fun. That, in turn, really does make it a necessity from time to time.